How to check your videos for common errors
In this guide:
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Check your Video
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Check your Captions
Check Your Video
The video player is a key component of Filmhub. It allows you, our Channel partners, and our team to stream videos directly.
Whenever a video is uploaded to Filmhub, our system automatically creates a “Preview” for streaming purposes. Although all video files are stored and delivered with much higher quality output, Previews are heavily compressed for seamless streaming. This will make your film also appear slightly darker.
Previews are generally available within a few hours of upload, depending on the length and size of the original video file. The play icon turns green when a Preview is ready.
To play a video, click its Watch icon.
When a video is playing, hover your mouse over the player window to show the Play/Pause button, progress bar, volume control, Captions (CCs), and full-screen switch.
We highly recommend that you perform eyeball tests using our video player each time you add a video. Most video issues we find during our QC can be easily detected. A few most common ones (See Video Requirements for more information):
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Video should start playing within no more than 5 seconds of black screen. Any pre-rolls (countdowns, color bars and test tones, extended period of black screen) should be trimmed off.
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If you see black edges around the image, it means the video is padded in the source (it's not the player). Padded videos (added letterbox/pillarbox) are not recommended.
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If the image appears stretched, it’s very likely that your video has anamorphic pixels.
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Pay attention to fast-moving objects or camera pans. This allows you to catch issues such as interlacing and image stutter (duplicated frames).
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Watch out for dropouts, visual glitches, or any unintended artifacts.
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Listen closely - ideally with decent headphones or speakers. Audio should be properly balanced - signal should come from both Left and Right channels, dialogue should be mostly centered. Watch out for any distortion, clipping, unintended artifacts, muted dialogues, etc.
Checking Captions
Preview also allows checking Captions.
Click the “CC” icon in the bottom right corner and select the text track you want to check.
We recommend checking a few random spots to make sure text tracks show up in the correct format and stay in sync throughout the video. Do the words on the screen match what people are saying at that exact time?
You can also share Previews outside of Filmhub. Each Preview contains a secure screening link. Sharing this link will allow anyone with the link to watch the Preview whether or not they have a Filmhub account.